The Arizona Desert is a place that is very dangerous and has claimed the lives of many people. In the book, A Devils Highway, it takes us through the real story of 26 men and their journey through this hell. Many of the men did not survive the journey, and all of them were crossing to make a living or to go find a job so they can make money. This has been seen many work done by Latinos, such as The Guardians and Bless Me Ultima. Hispanics are forced to go to many lengths in order to supply for their family. I can never remember anybody in my family have to going to such extremes to make money for food and shelter. Not only is the travel dangerous but, they are forced to leave their family.
After the discussion in class about our own history I went home to ask my parents about our history. My mother told me that she herself hardly knew anything. Her dad came from lower Indiana and her mother from upper Michigan. They met and moved to Cassopolis but, other than that she didn’t know. This has got me curious and though I don’t know much I plan on looking to better find our history. They have given names of some relatives who have looked into our family history who I can get a hold of and talk to. To me this is important because all of us came from somewhere and it’s important to remember that when we are judging Latinos so harshly.
I believe it’s important to study Latino Literature and learn from the cultural. One thing I would like to see would be more Latino literature in schools. We read a lot of white male authors and now teachers are began assigning female authors. But Latinos are becoming a proud group who are becoming a big part of our country and I think we need to recognize the accomplishments made by Latinos.
Jessica, I agree with you that school curricula tend to be far too one sided. While there have definitely been plenty of good white male authors, they are vastly overrepresented in the literary canon. Now, it seems, some are taking on the issue of representing different groups.
ReplyDeleteI was in a genre class last semester where--literally--every single author was white and writing about white characters. In my research project, I took it upon myself to research Latino authors writing in this particular genre and was fascinated with what I found, but also wondered why we weren't reading more of these books.
I think the reason why courses like Latino Lit are really important is that many the students here would not be reading these books, otherwise.